On television, the state of Utah eagerly promotes the magnificence of its five national parks. “This is life elevated,” the narrator intones in one of the state’s many tourism commercials. “Five iconic parks. One epic experience.” But off screen, state and federal lawmakers from Utah have worked aggressively to dismantle protections for millions of acres […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday is expected to unveil its rollback of a major offshore-drilling safety regulation, significantly weakening an Obama-era rule that was put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, […]

Manuel Luján Jr., a former 10-term Republican congressman from New Mexico and a secretary of the interior whose efforts to balance development and conservation of federal lands often left him at loggerheads with environmentalists, died on Thursday night at his home in Albuquerque. He was 90. A granddaughter, Amy Everett, confirmed the death. In a […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior’s inspector general has launched a new investigation into one or more political appointees at the agency, a move it described as a “related investigation” to a federal probe into the ethics practices of […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — A federal judge late Friday delivered a significant setback to the Trump administration’s policy of promoting coal, ruling that the Interior Department acted illegally when it sought to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal mining on public lands. […]

Last Thursday, the Senate voted 56-to-41 to confirm David Bernhardt, President Trump’s pick for secretary of the interior. Four days later, the department’s inspector general opened an ethics investigation into the new chief for potential “conflict of interest and other violations.” Even by the standards of the ethically elastic Trump administration, this is impressive. A […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Interior Department’s internal watchdog has opened an investigation into ethics complaints against the agency’s newly installed secretary, David Bernhardt. Mr. Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and agribusiness industries, was confirmed by the Senate last week […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and agribusiness industries, as secretary of the interior. The confirmation of Mr. Bernhardt to his new post coincided with calls from more than […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — A previously unreleased invoice indicates that David Bernhardt, President Trump’s choice to lead the Interior Department, continued to lobby for a major client several months after he filed official papers saying that he had ended his lobbying activities. […]

ANCHORAGE — Working through two winters in the biting Arctic cold, roustabouts bored three miles deep into the coastal plain of northeast Alaska in search of oil. In the spring of 1986, they packed up and left, uttering not a word about what they had found and leaving only a short section of steel pipe […]

Out in the way beyond, the open land on the far side of the Mueller report and cable news obsessives, is a vast kingdom now being used to hasten the demise of the planet. You may know this area, more than 500 million acres of empty vales and thick forests, high plains and diamond-cut peaks, […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — President Trump’s choice to lead the Interior Department — David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who has been accused of conflicts of interest — faced questioning Thursday from senators who must decide whether he is the right person […]

WASHINGTON — After years of effort, scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service had a moment of celebration as they wrapped up a comprehensive analysis of the threat that three widely used pesticides present to hundreds of endangered species, like the kit fox and the seaside sparrow. “Woohoo!” Patrice Ashfield, then a branch chief at […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration violated federal law by failing to adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. But the decision by the United […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday finalized its plan to loosen Obama-era protections on the habitat of the sage grouse, an imperiled ground-nesting bird that roams across 10 oil-rich Western states. The plan, which would strip away protections for […]

The Northern Rockies are surely near the top of the list of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. Its ranges contain one of the last great expanses of biodiversity left in the continental United States, including most of the species that were there when Lewis and Clark first passed through in 1805 on their journey of […]

HELENA, Mont. — Federal wildlife officials are proposing to strip endangered species protections from the gray wolf populations in the Lower 48 states, citing significant increases in their numbers across much of the nation. The decision, announced on Wednesday by David Bernhardt, the acting secretary of the Interior Department, is likely to set off another […]

President Trump has talked for years about hosting a patriotic parade in Washington, and on Sunday he announced that something of the sort would take place in a Fourth of July “gathering” at the Lincoln Memorial. “HOLD THE DATE!” Mr. Trump said in a tweet about the event, which he said would be called “A […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water. As […]

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. A plan to conduct seismic testing for oil and gas exploration across a large swath of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has been shelved for this winter, Interior Department officials have said. The announcement signals at least a […]